


Nothing To Sneeze At

by coffeeinallcaps



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-29 06:42:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6363565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeeinallcaps/pseuds/coffeeinallcaps
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I love you,” Finn tells Poe for the first time, the words muffled by his hand over his mouth, and then he suppresses another sneeze and blood starts pouring from his nose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing To Sneeze At

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Door](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Door/gifts).



> Written for the Tumblr prompt "I wish you would write a fic where they move the resistance base to a new planet and Finn discovers he is allergic to like half the native flora".

The planet has forests and sand dunes and waterfalls and sprawling fields of colorful flowers and plants, and Finn loves it, all of it—right up until the moment when he doesn’t.

At first he thinks the shortness of breath is just because he’s not yet back at full strength and they’ve been exploring their new surroundings for a couple of hours now. Poe is wandering ahead, leading Finn along winding dirt paths flanked by the branchless trunks of trees that grow in impossibly straight and thin lines, bursting into foliage high above their heads.

They’ve already passed several small lakes, and they pause on a hill overlooking yet another one. Finn bends over, puts his hands on his knees and tries to inhale deeply.

“You all right, buddy?” Poe asks, clapping him on the shoulder.

“Yeah,” Finn says. He rubs at his eyes, which are itching. “Just catching my breath.”

Poe grins at him. “Breathtaking, isn’t it?”

He’s gazing out at the lake. The water is so clear you can see the pale, shell-studded sand at the bottom. Finn looks at Poe—his face grimy and gleaming with sweat, his curls sticking to his forehead in damp strands, his brilliant smile crinkling the corners of his eyes—and says, “Yeah, you are.”

Giving Poe a compliment is always a bit of an adventure; Finn never knows whether he’s going to get faux-smug Poe or genuinely touched Poe in return. Not that it matters, really. He likes them both equally. He’s liked every single permutation of Poe he’s been given a glimpse of so far, including but not limited to snarky Poe, headstrong Poe, elated Poe, determined Poe, worried Poe, and careful and soft-spoken “Can I kiss you?” Poe. Finn likes all of them.

This time, Poe’s grin melts into a milder version of itself, his eyes first meeting Finn’s and then flickering down. Finn straightens up again, and Poe touches Finn’s face, strokes his cheek with his thumb.

“So are you,” Poe says, drawing Finn in for a kiss.

It’s a perfect moment. A stunning setting; the sun warming their backs; Poe’s breath brushing softly against Finn’s lips as they step closer to each other, both of Poe’s hands slotting into place around Finn’s neck. It’s the kind of moment you wish could last forever.

There’s an audible crunch as Finn’s knuckles collide with Poe’s jaw in his haste to push Poe out of the way before the first sneeze hits him.

“Fuck,” he says, eyes watering with the next sneeze. “I am so”—another one—“sorry.” Another one, what the hell. “Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”

He sneezes again.

Poe is cradling his jaw. “I’m fine,” he says with a wince. “Are _you_ okay?”

Finn lets out a sneeze in response. This one is so forceful that he doubles over with it. His eyes are burning.

“Hey,” Poe says gently, crouching down in front of Finn, which, seriously, Finn just sucker-punched him in the face to avoid sneezing all over him and now he’s voluntarily putting himself in the line of fire again. This guy really has an underdeveloped sense of self-preservation. Finn turns away, pinching his nose shut in an attempt to hold in the next sneeze.

“You shouldn’t do that,” Poe says. “You could burst a capillary.”

He looks concerned, eyebrows drawn together, as though Finn breaking a tiny little blood vessel in his eye or nose would be a truly awful thing to happen. He’s still crouched down, forearms braced on his thighs as he frowns up at Finn, and Finn is simultaneously hit by another volley of sneezes and a wave of emotion.

Then, a brief lull in the storm. He tries and fails to take a deep breath. One of Poe’s hands is curling around his calf.

“I love you,” Finn tells Poe for the first time, the words muffled by his hand over his mouth, and then he suppresses another sneeze and blood starts pouring from his nose.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Finn, I’ve got the results of your tests here,” Dr. Kalonia says when she comes to find them at their quarters. They’re officially Poe’s quarters, but Finn and Rey have colonized them, nominally because Rey doesn’t feel like unpacking her stuff (Poe: “You own approximately _three things_.” Rey: “So what?”). “You’re allergic to…” Dr. Kalonia grimaces at the holoscreen in her hands. “Well, pretty much all the native flora of this planet, I’m afraid.”

Rey bursts into laughter.

“That’s not funny,” Poe says from where he’s leaning back against the desk, arms folded across his chest. A bruise is blooming on his jaw.

“Poe, please,” Rey says. “It’s hilarious.”

Poe frowns.

“It is pretty hilarious,” Finn weighs in.

Poe is still frowning. He’s being uncharacteristically morose about this. “I didn’t think it was all that hilarious when you were sneezing all over the place and I had to half carry you back here with no clue what was going on,” he says. “You could’ve been poisoned for all we knew.”

“You’re exaggerating a little, Dameron,” Finn says. “I walked on my own two feet.”

“Straight into a tree.”

Rey is laughing again.

“That only happened once, and it happened _because I had to sneeze_ ,” Finn says. Speaking of which, he can feel another sneeze coming up. He covers his nose and mouth with the handkerchief BB-8 had somehow managed to find for him. Rey pats his shoulder.

“I’ll see if we have any medication to alleviate your symptoms,” Dr. Kalonia says when Finn is done sneezing and wiping the tears from his itchy eyes. “But we’re still fitting out the med bay, and you know we don’t always have what we need on hand. I’m sure you won’t be the only one suffering from allergies, though. We might need to send someone out on a medical supply run.”

Poe nods.

“Thanks, doc. Take your time,” Finn says. “It’s not that big a deal.”

Dr. Kalonia smiles at him. “Oh, and Rey?” she says. “General Organa asked to see you.”

“Coming,” Rey says, hopping to her feet. “Take care of him, will you?”

She’s addressing Poe, who nods again, solemnly. Finn is starting to feel more and more like the damsel in distress in a trashy holodrama, not in the least because Poe had insisted that Finn stay on the bed— _in_ bed, even, but Finn had bullied him into making a few concessions—until the doctor got back to them.

Dr. Kalonia and Rey leave, and Poe unfolds his arms and comes over to Finn. He’s still wearing the same loose-collared shirt he was wearing on their hike, the sleeves pushed up; there are still smudges of dirt on his cheeks, and his hair is still tousled.

Sometimes, Finn thinks, looking at Poe is like staring straight into the sun.

“Were you really worried?” Finn asks as Poe mirrors his position on the bed, back against the wall and one knee pulled up to his chest.

Poe shrugs. “Sneezing and shortness of breath aren’t typical symptoms of poisoning,” he says, which doesn’t answer Finn’s question at all.

“But?” Finn prompts after a pause.

Poe shrugs again. “But nothing,” he says.

“But you were worried,” Finn says.

“Yeah,” Poe says. He takes Finn’s hand and holds it, starts tracing the lines in Finn’s palm with the index finger of his other hand. It tickles. “Jess once managed to almost die on me like that when we were on a mission together.”

“Whoa,” Finn says, watching Poe draw meaningless shapes on his skin. “That’s a story she hasn’t told me yet.”

“That’s probably because she has a lot of stories that are a lot more exciting than the one where I spent half an hour bruising her chest and breathing into her mouth just because she’d accidentally touched a poisonous plant,” Poe says.

“First part sounds pretty exciting to me,” Finn says, nudging Poe’s shoulder with his own.

Poe huffs out a breath. His fingers thread into Finn’s. Finn glances at him through his eyelashes; Poe is looking down at where both of his hands are clasped warmly around Finn’s. Introspective Poe is a Poe Finn hadn’t yet gotten after complimenting him. It is a permutation of Poe he’s seen glimpses of before, though—late at night while watching holovids with the others, Poe zoning out without noticing that Finn’s attention is on him, or when Poe has just come back from a long flight, quiet and pliant with exhaustion but never too tired to smile when he catches sight of Finn.

Just when Finn is about to say something, Poe says, “I really like you.”

Finn’s face goes hot. He says, teasingly, “Is that your way of saying ‘I love you too’?”

“No,” Poe says. “It’s my way of saying ‘please don’t accidentally touch any poisonous plants and die on me’.”

“I’ll try,” Finn says.

“This is my way of saying I love you too,” Poe says softly, leaning in, eyelids dipping down, and of course that’s the moment when Finn has to duck down to muffle another sneeze on the sleeve of Poe’s shirt.

**Author's Note:**

> I was coerced into writing this. Sort of. Fluff is bad for your teeth so I'm off for a porn and/or angst cleanse now, TOODLES.
> 
> P.S. Comments make my life, and please come hang out with me [on Tumblr](http://coffeeinallcaps.tumblr.com)!


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